Are Cafés Cracking Down on Laptop Users?

When we checked in with Wi-Fi-equipped restaurants last year to find out whether it was kosher to bust out a laptop, their owners said they didn’t see much computing — but coffee shops, of course, are a different story. Last week, café owner turned novelist Michael Idov gave some advice on where to write in public (commenters chimed in with their own suggestions), but there’s also the question: Which places should you avoid, lest you get the stink eye or worse? The Wall Street Journal, in an article about the “laptop backlash” (supposedly accelerated by unemployed customers who go so far as to bring their own tea bags and sandwiches to cafés), names Naidre’s, Espresso 77 in Jackson Heights, Café Grumpy, and Cocoa Bar as being hostile to typists. Any others? Warn your fellow extrovert scribes in the comments.